Nice try, Hugo, but Bush doesn't deserve the billing

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, September 27, 2006

It was a minor furor. A cute political hubbub, Dems and Repubs alike reluctantly defending poor confused Dubya from the slings and arrows of outrageous Venezuelans.

George W. Bush is the devil! cried the otherwise wonderfully charismatic but also dumbly ham-fisted Hugo Chavez in front of a bank of U.N. microphones. America is the Great Satan! agrees Islamic fundamentalism, as it mindlessly firebombs a few thousand innocent cars and blows up various KFCs in endless examples of idiotic violence that, ironically, makes Allah shrink in humiliation.

It's a delightfully common appraisal, this Bush-is-the-devil thing, one I hear frequently from my otherwise highly intelligent, liberal brethren. But is George W. Bush really Satan? Was he really sent to us by an angry and sighing God(dess) to test our ability to suffer toxic GOP fools with greater humor and more sex and good scotch? Let us examine the evidence.

Truly, Bush's claim to titanic evilness appears irrefutable. The list of atrocities is so extensive as to be dazzling. Hell, can't we all sense his pallid wickedness down in our very bones? Aren't we all more than a little embarrassed by it? Isn't this the real reason everyone's so annoyed with Chavez? Not because he's wrong but because he's just, you know, horribly tactless?

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But I am here to tell you, it ain't that easy. I am here to set the record straight. Well, straighter. Because unfortunately, no matter how much we all want to believe it's true, Bush simply cannot be the devil. He simply doesn't have the chops.

Let us turn, for a moment, to Milton's epic poem "Paradise Lost," perhaps the most heavily canonized and lovingly detailed examination of the underworld and its enraged minions, where Satan cuts, quite simply, one hell of a figure.

Here is Lucifer, a massive, thunderous hero, subtle and intelligent and enormously articulate, full of passion and red-hot anarchy, the ultimate rebel. He is often seen reclining in his cavernous, rocky lair, lying on his side, all muscled godlike beauty and ruined glory and deep seduction and heat. He is just terribly, wonderfully alluring.

See? Right there, already we're a galaxy away from Dubya. Bush, of course, has no such magnificence. Bush is small and quivery and eats his vanilla pudding with a fork. While Satan orates and philosophizes at great intellectual length, Dubya can't even sit still during an entire State of the Union address without fidgeting and moving his upper body back and forth like a little metronome, twitching and squirming like a child.

Also: Bush does not recline. He hunkers. Bush does not radiate hot, seductive beauty -- he sheds sawdust and bad grammar like dandruff. Bush is, it must be noted, about as sexy and alluring as mushy asparagus. Or Ann Coulter. Same difference.

It is, at least initially, a question of style. The devil is always preternaturally cool. The devil is always powerfully sexy. He is the grand, sympathetic villain full of potent aura, seductive force, excellent badass cowboy boots made of forgotten dreams and kinky sex and extinct pterodactyl.

Bush is, of course, never cool. Bush ambles, stutters, gropes German chancellors without warning, speaks with his mouth full of bread and spits the crumbs on the jackets of foreign leaders. Bush's cowboy boots are made of petroleum and Elmer's glue and cheap cowhide from depressed, hormone-injected Texas cattle. The devil wears Prada. Maybe a little Dolce. Bush wears tighty-whities and plaid. It is not an insignificant distinction.

Ah, but image is not everything, yes? What of character? Intellect? Soul? What of deeds and courage and compelling, ruinous action?

In Milton, the glorious angel Lucifer's incredible act of defiance, his stunning rebellion against God, marks him as not merely proud and insolent but powerfully courageous. After all, Satan chooses to endure unbelievable suffering for the sake of his independence, rather than endure numb cubicle-like servility in heaven. Also, hell has better booze. Cooler dance clubs. Less insufferable harp music. That sort of thing.

And lo, here is Bush. Dubya is, everyone agrees, a bit of an intellectual midget. He is a champion of sameness and mediocrity and unquestioned obedience, a hero to absolutely no one with a functioning soul, the cubicle personified.

Is this really the mark of the beast? Verily I say unto thee, it is not.

What of Bush's supposed courage? His defiance? After all, he is defying international torture laws, though not because he was full of hot nerve but because Rumsfeld told him to and because he could get away with it. He does ignore hard science for the sake of childish biblical literalism and oily cronyism. And he does see himself as a rogue cowboy whose valor and foresight in attacking the Islamic world won't be appreciated until long after he's gone.

Of course, it is a house built on Saudi Arabian sand, spiritual vacuity, a secret wish for bloody Armageddon. Bush's is not the hero's journey. It is the lackey's shuffle, the imposter's grope, the alcoholic's blind stumble over the curb of human progress.

Are there some similarities? You bet. Like Dubya, the devil desperately wants a grand holy war to settle, once and for all, just who owns the kingdom of heaven. And Satan degenerates horribly in "Paradise Lost," begins to take the form of many "lowly" animals (a toad, a snake, etc.) as he degrades. Bush, too, has devolved. He started out as a barely tolerable but initially benign political tumor. He has since become dangerous and deadly, a weird strain of Texas mold creeping into the heart of a wary nation.

The devil smells of sulfur and fire. Bush smells of cow pies and stale beer. The devil is wickedly, tremendously deceptive, bending entire armies of lowly demons to his will. Bush cleverly inflamed armies of lemming-like evangelical Christians to vote for him by way of gay bashing and woman bashing and fear, through the snarling machinations of his very own shiny Moloch, Karl Rove. It's a worthy comparison.

But alas, it is not enough. There is no majesty to Dubya. No real heat, depth, grand intellectual power to his evilness. Bush is to a real Lucifer what a rat terrier is to a werewolf, what Jack Daniel's is to a pure single malt, what a heat lamp is to global warming: a pale wannabe. A weak imitation, trying hard to scorch your soul but only managing a bit of a rug burn.

Sorry Mr. Chavez, but Bush is no devil. He is not nearly capable enough, sexy enough, charming enough, debauched or gloriously ruined enough. Bush cannot possibly fill the devil's gorgeous, tragic Prada shoes. He's far more akin to something to be scraped from the bottom of them.